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KKBOX

“Akamai is a leader in web application acceleration, performance management and media delivery with an excellent track record for ensuring reliable performance. With past great accomplishments in the media and entertainment industry, Akamai has been a valuable and reliable partner for KKBOX. We are confident that Akamai has equipped us to provide the best user experience for KKBOX users in Taiwan and Southeast Asia”

Gea-Suan Lin
,
Lead Engineer, Platform Technology
,
KKBOX

The Situation

KKBOX, Asia’s leading music streaming service was launched in 2004 by a group of programmers with a shared passion for technology and music. The expansion to Hong Kong in 2009 resulted in steadily increasing subscriptions across the region. As KKBOX expanded, Japanese telecom company KDDI Group became KKBOX’s majority shareholder followed by HTC, the global leader in smartphone innovation, and GIC. KKBOX is now aggressively expanding into overseas markets setting Southeast Asia as priority to offer the greatest online streaming music platform in Asia.

The Challenge

In recent years, KKBOX started to expand its music delivery service out of Taiwan to other locations in Asia, such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan and Thailand. During its early years, KKBOX identified speed of download as a potential risk, which could seriously impact customer satisfaction and overall user experience. To deal with this challenge, KKBOX decided to work with Akamai, a global cloud services provider, to provide scale and accelerate media delivery performance.

Accelerate software delivery: By providing a high-performance media experience, KKBOX wants to strengthen customer loyalty, increase the number of users and grow its business in Asia.

Why Akamai

Choosing the Akamai Intelligent Platform

“Akamai is a leader in web application acceleration, performance management and media delivery with an excellent track record for ensuring reliable performance. With past great accomplishments in the media and entertainment industry, Akamai has been a valuable and reliable partner for KKBOX. We are confident that Akamai has equipped us to provide the best user experience for KKBOX users in Taiwan and Southeast Asia,” said Gea-Suan Lin.

Accelerated Streaming Services and Increased Customer Satisfaction

Once Akamai solutions were deployed, KKBOX was able to provide a stable connection and consistent speed for music streaming. After using Akamai’s Media Delivery Solutions, the download speed was boosted by 425 percent for overseas markets. In Malaysia, for example, the number of members tripled in the second month and continued to increase steadily. For Thailand, in addition to new members, the music streaming traffic also increased by 65 percent. In addition, KKBOX offers high quality streaming music at 320Kbps with AAC format. Akamai’s Media Delivery Solutions not only enabled up to 6400Kbps streaming, but also supported 10Gbps peak traffic in a fast-paced media environment. Akamai solutions ensured that KKBOX delivered top audio quality with a stable streaming media experience.

Ability to Scale on Demand

Currently, there are more than 10 million registered users for KKBOX, including 2 million paid subscribers. In addition to slow download speeds that could seriously impact customer satisfaction and cause loss of users, even the slightest delay or disruption could ruin the overall user experience. Since the infrastructure of KKBOX was not able to withstand the large volume of online traffic generated from the live webcast of large-scale live concerts, KKBOX needed a reliable media delivery system for their users overseas.

To deal with this challenge, KKBOX leveraged Akamai’s media CDN solutions to enhance web performance and scalability. “With Akamai’s support, ‘The 9th KKBOX Music Awards’ was handled smoothly and was a great success. After Akamai’s solutions were deployed, we witnessed seamless streaming video broadcasts across six APAC countries for the first time. We were confident that KKBOX could rely on Akamai to support similar live media streaming events of scale and could properly handle traffic spikes as a result,” said Gea-Suan Lin.

Cost Savings with Flexibility for Future Expansion

The deployment of Akamai solutions was a seamless and simple process. The installation took a short time to complete, and KKBOX utilized Akamai’s Intelligent Platform to deliver its website and high-quality media content to its users. This enabled the company to upgrade its KKBOX operating systems in a cost-effective manner, as the system did not require additional infrastructure.

About KKBOX

KKBOX, Asia’s leading music streaming service, was established in 2004 by a group of Taiwanese software programmers with a shared passion for technology and music. With the support from more than 500 international major and local independent music labels, KKBOX features over 20 million legal tracks, including the most comprehensive Asia-Pop music library, and is currently available in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand with over 10 million users. We are committed to creating a truly immersive online music experience to users, and to empower artists and their music through technological innovation. With its advanced product technology, strategic vision and strong local partnerships, KKBOX is aggressively expanding into international markets. For more information on KKBOX, please visit www.kkbox.com/about.

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